Sales and Marketing
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Wikipedia-Article "Sales"
Sales, or the activity of selling, forms an integral part of commercial activity. Mastering sales is considered by many as some sort of persuading "art". On the contrary, the methodological approach of selling refers to it as a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relate his offering enabling the buyer to visualize how to achieve his goal in an economic way.
Selling is a practical implementation of marketing; it often forms a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salesmen (singular: salesman or salesperson).
The successful questioning to understand a customer's goal, the further creation of a valuable solution by communicating the necessary information that encourages a buyer to achieve his goal at an economic cost is the responsibility of the sales person or the sales engine (e.g. internet, vending machine etc).
The primary function of professional sales is to generate and close leads, educate prospects, fill needs and satisfy wants of consumers appropriately, and therefore turn prospective customers into actual ones.
From a marketing point of view, selling is one of the methods of promotion used by marketers. Other promotional techniques include advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations.
Various sales strategies exist, such as tit-for-tat which is best if ongoing dealings and interactions are expected. This insight is behind so-called consultative sales process which are used by Saturn to sell cars, as well as for some direct Business-to-Business sales.
Several types of sales exist including direct, consultative, and complex sales. Complex sales varies from other types in that the customer plays a more pro-active role, often requiring proposal response to their Request for Proposal (RFP).
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Forms
Modes of selling include:
- Direct Sales - involving face-to-face contact
- retail or consumer
- door-to-door or travelling salesman
- business-to-business
- Indirect - human-mediated but with indirect contact
- telemarketing or telesales
- mail-order
- Electronic
- Agency-based
- consignment
- multi-level marketing
- sales agents (real estate, manufacturing)
Types of sales include:
- Direct sales
- Consultative sales
- Complex sales
Critique of selling
In theory, the purpose of selling is to help a customer realize his or her goals in an economic fashion. However, in reality this is not always the case. Customers can be influenced to purchase a product or service that initially was not of interest to them. Some salespeople are trained in the art of selling customers things they don't need.
Take for example the purchasing of a car: a consumer may have a set of cars in mind (called an evoked set) that she feels match her needs, wants and budget. She may seek the advice of a salesperson given that a salesperson can help her realize the right car given those criteria. This can be a socially useful function; salespeople have specialized knowledge of products that can help consumers make an informed decision. However, a salesperson may also talk a consumer into purchasing a more expensive or perhaps larger car then she needs or can afford. In this context, the salesperson may have usefully helped the customer re-evaluate her needs, thereby establishing a new set of appropriate choices among which included the newer or large car. This again would be a helpful and useful service provided by the salesperson. However, it is sometimes the case that customers purchase a product or service that was not initially intended and remains an inappropriate purchase after the fact. On the other hand, the consumer in this scenario can be held partially responsible for the inappropriate purchase; indeed, "A fool and his money are soon parted." (P.T. Barnum, English proverbs)
This dysfunctional behaviour is encouraged by:
- incentives of salespeople to increase their total number of sales, especially where retailers keep track of sales or offer commission-based salaries
- incentives from the manufactures of products or the companies of service providers to salespeople to sell their products where other similar products offered by competitors are offered
- the incentive to sell a customer a product that is in need of being cleared out, despite the fact that a customer may be better to wait for the new product
References
The Free Compendium of Professional Selling. United Professional Sales Association. URL accessed on Jan, 2005.
See also
- Marketing, promotion, Contract of sale, list of marketing topics, sales techniques
- Vendor-independent solutions provider
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Wikipedia-Article "Marketing"
| Topics in Marketing. |
| Key concepts |
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Product / Price / Promotion |
| Promotion |
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Advertising / Sales promotion |
| Promotional media |
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Newspapers / Magazines |
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Marketing "is the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." American Marketing Association.
Prior to the advent of market research, most companies were product-focused, employing teams of salespeople to push their products into or onto the market, regardless of market desire. A market-focused, or customer-focused, organization instead first determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product or service. Marketing theory and practice is justified on the belief that customers use a product/service because they have a need, or because a product/service has a perceived benefit.
Two major aspects of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management).
An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers.
Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place and improving the products/service continuously to protect her business from competitive encroachments.
Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts.
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Types of markets
The word market originally meant the place where the exchange between seller and buyer took place. Today we speak of a market as either a region where goods are sold and bought or particular types of buyer (summarized from Wells, Burnett, Moriarty, pg. 65–66). When strategizing specialists in marketing comment about markets they are usually referring to the different groups of people and/or organizations. The four major market groups are 1) consumer, 2) business to business, 3) institutional, and 4) reseller.
Product, price, promotion, and placement
In popular usage, the term "marketing" refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning that recognizes that marketing is customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language.
The Four Ps are:
- Product: The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
- Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts.
- Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
- Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing.
These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer can use these variables to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Industrial or b2b marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.
Technique
For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "p's" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process.
Most companies today have a customer orientation (also called customer focus). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on customer needs. Generally there are two ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach and the product innovation approach.
In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures inspite of being technological breakthroughs.
The next big thing is a concept in marketing that refers to a product or idea that will allow for a high amount of sales for that product and related products. Marketers believe that by finding or creating the next big thing they will spark a cultural revolution that results in this sales increase.
In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that a profitable market segment(s) exists for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.
Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing or online marketing. It typically tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.
Criticism of marketing
Some aspects of marketing, especially promotion, are the subject of criticism. See the main article Criticism of marketing.
Related lists
See List of marketing topics for an extensive list of the marketing articles on Wikipedia.
- list of management topics
- list of human resource management topics
- list of economics topics
- list of finance topics
- list of accounting topics
- list of information technology management topics
- list of production topics
- list of business law topics
- list of international trade topics
- list of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
- list of business theorists
- list of economists
- list of corporate leaders
- list of companies
External links
- KnowThis.com - Marketing Virtual Library – an extensive marketing reference site
- SOSIG Marketing directory – a directory of marketing topics available on the web
- Media and Advertising Directory
- Study notes on core marketing topics
- Knowledge-Community.com - The Community of Knowledge-Workers worldwide